One way or another the Clippers are going on the block soon and are expected to fetch better than $1 billion as a sales price. If you really want to be nauseous, remember Donald Sterling bought the Clippers for $12.5 million ($3 million down) and is about to become flush with cash one way or another.

So who might buy the Clippers?

• Magic Johnson and the Guggenheim group. Also known as the poetic justice bid. This is a group the league would love to see own the team — they already own the Dodgers (having won a sealed bid process much like the league might use), they have one of the most iconic personalities in Los Angeles as the front man, they have the money via the other guys in the group, and it would be a nice little kick in the behind for Donald Sterling as he is pushed out the door. If the Sterlings sell the team themselves before the league takes it from them, the odds of this group winning go down fast.

• Oprah Winfrey, David Geffen and Larry Ellison. That trio is pretty much the definition of deep pockets. Any one of them could buy a team (Lord knows Ellison has tried) and together they have money and star power. This has to be the early favorite in the process. You can insert your own “you get a contract and you get a contract” joke right here.

• Grant Hill and his investment group. Grant Hill was always the guy in the locker room who was reading the Wall Street Journal instead of tweeting, the guy who would put Bloomberg TV on instead of ESPN on a locker room television. He’s got a mind for business. And he has assembled a group that may buy the Clippers, reports Marc Stein at ESPN.

•Rick Caruso. A developer whose name is not known all that well outside Los Angeles, but in L.A. he’s the guy that owns the Grove. He was in the running to buy the Dodgers but lost out to the Magic/Guggenheim group.

• Patrick Soon-Shiong. Another name not known outside the City of Angels, but the medical researcher and business man is the richest man in Los Angeles, worth $9.8 billion. He already owners four percent of Lakers, so he has been through the league’s ownership vetting process.

• Yao Ming.According to Bill Simmons of Grantland (and confirmed by ESPN’s Marc Stein), Yao is getting together a group of Chinese investors to make a bid. Seems a long shot but you never know.

There are a lot of smaller names that could try to attach as a minority owner with a group, such as Floyd Mayweather Jr. (he would never pass the league’s screening process for owners), Rick Ross, Frankie Muniz and others. They will get pub if attached to a deal, but like Grant Hill and Magic Johnson they are not the real money.

These are just the names we know. There are always hedge fund billionaires just circling the NBA looking for an investment (see the Milwaukee Bucks sale for $550 million) so other names who can write big checks will certainly pop up.

For the Sterlings, that is enough to create one massive bidding war. They are going to pocket a lot of money on this sale, whoever handles it. Which is a little disturbing, really.

i’m just wondering what role Dr. Phil would play on Oprah’s team. Dr. Phil might not know jack about xs and os (like most coaches in the league today) but he sure as hell could motivate his team during timeouts and halftime speeches better than anyone else. can you say championship?

Something tells me the league/owners will approve a new owner that has darker skin pigmentation than Yao…

Oprah? check

Magic? check

Grant Hill? check

Of course they’ll be others in the ownership group, but there will be someone prominent who is a black person like one of the three above or someone else as part of the new ownership that replaces Donald “I’m Backwards” Sterling…

DO NOT LET OPRAH OWN A SPORTS FRANCHISE. If you have half a brain you’d realize that this woman is absurdly incompetent. Anyone that disagrees with this….let me rephrase, you have a show where you asked individuals about their problems and then logically deduce a normal outside opinion. ANY PERSON CAN DO THIS. She just happened to be chosen. This lady doesn’t deserve to own millions let alone a FRANCHISE. Words cannot describe how horrible of a decision this would be. If d. Sterling has one more racist decision to make…it would be the right decision for the wrong reasons. Keep to your crappy shows oprah STAY THE HELL OFF MY ESPN

Just because anyone can do that, doesn’t mean that people would want to watch a show of any random person doing it. But people want to watch Oprah – some of them very badly. These people genuinely love and care about Oprah Winfrey as a person because she engenders that kind of devotion. It’s called charisma and presence and she has it in excess.

Well, Oprah doesn’t know the first thing about any sport, so her buying a team would only be as a financial investment. It’s a surer bet than the stock market. With Yao Ming , there would always be the threat of relocation to China. Or at least playing a number of “home games” there. Hill is a nice guy, but he has no real connection with LA, and he would be the “face” of whatever group he was with. He also possibly could be persuaded to take the team to Seattle. Caruso is known in LA as someone who would turn every inch of the National Forest into developed land if given the chance. It comes down to Soon-Shiong and Magic’s group. I would be fine with either one of these two.
What’s scary is that the NBA hasn’t said anything about making sure the team stays in LA. That being said, I hope local ownership buys them.

why is it disturbing that the Sterlings will be even richer? You want to take their property totally away just because they made a racial comment. Or you think it’s disturbing because they made a huge profit. how immature are you.

This is America not red china or North Korea. You want to take,the team and sell it and not let,them sell it themselves.

so it’s ok to have a black racist owning an NBA and not a white..oh I get it…Most of the players are black so it’s ok to be a racist against whites. You can’t be a racist if you are black because all the racists are white. WRONG…

that is the problem when you have a black president who divides the country.

I had to read thru 26 comments to realize that all of you need to get a life. Who gives a $hit who buys the Clippers? None of you A-holes are buying the team. Just get a life and sit back and chill. You shouldn’t care one bit who buys the team or what color that person is. Just know that it will be a billionaire and none of you are. I am surprised that with all of your rants, no one has blamed Obama for any of this.

Yao Ming! That would be insane in a cool way, as China seems to have made basketball their own game more than any other western sport, even soccer. Bet the food at games would be a lot better than hot dogs and burgers: Peking Duck with the pancakes and hoisin, please! Los Angeles has some of the best Chinese food this side of the International Date Line.

From My understanding Larry Jonson, NBA former player stated all the black players in the NBA should start there own league and leave the white players out. What a racist comment and you don’t hear about that in mainstream media.

I guess we are going Back to segregation thanks to Obama.. Remember the negro baseball league, 60′ yrs of progress wiped out by,the first black Muslim president.